Regular exercise is important for a number of reasons, including comprehensive health, weight control, muscle toning, and the correction and avoidance of cardiovascular conditions. Indeed, there are well-known correlations between the amount of exercise a person engages in and the individual's physical as well as mental health. Estimates indicate that over two million people die prematurely each year in the United States as a result of causes that are attributable to a lack of sufficient physical exercise.
Despite the well-known importance of exercise, motivating people to exercise continues to be a significant challenge. Indeed, boredom is often cited as the primary obstacle to exercise. To help combat the boredom, and maintain a person's motivation level to exercise, portable music devices have often been used in connection with performance of an exercise program. Example portable music devices have in the past included portable radios, portable cassette and compact disk players, and more recently have included mp3 players and other similar devices that store digital copies of audio files. As a person exercises, the person can play music or other audio information to increase the person's interest in continuing interest.
While music has often been helpful for some people to avoid or mitigate boredom during exercise, it often does not itself provide a significant incentive to exercise. Indeed, modern devices such as smart phones, portable media players (e.g., the IPOD TOUCH® available from Apple Inc.), laptops, e-readers, tablet computing devices, and the like allow music to be available almost anywhere, whether stored directly on the device or streamed over a wireless network. A person simply doesn't need to exercise to listen to music as they may listen to music while doing other, less strenuous activities. Further, the same devices that often allow music to be available anywhere often are integrated with other capabilities. Such capabilities may include video, communication (e.g., video chat, instant messaging, text messaging, telephone, etc.), video game, and other capabilities. Teenagers and even younger children now often carry such devices, and can find entertainment with such devices that not only provides little incentive to exercise, but distracts them from exercising.
An example of a system for incentivizing people to exercise, and particularly for incentivizing children to exercise, is found in U.S. Patent Publication No. 2006/0025282, in which an exercise computer monitors the exercise performed by a child. The exercise computer may be portable and wearable. When the child performs well on certain exercises, or exercises regularly, the child may be rewarded. Example rewards include video games, cartoons, music, and merchant coupons. Additionally, the exercise computer may monitor the child's progress and skills and provide motivation and advice.
In addition, other related exercise systems, devices and methods for motivating people to exercise include those in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,456,648, 7,955,219, U.S. Patent Publication No. 2008/0027673, U.S. Patent Publication No. 2008/0147502, U.S. Patent Publication No. 2009/0118100, and U.S. Patent Publication No. 2011/0275483.